This is not the end Tony Nicklinson deserved

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The ‘slippery slope to murder’ argument must not prevail. Canada has shown mercy to sufferers and we must too

Death for Tony Nicklinson will have come as a blessed relief. Anyone who watched the footage of the moment when he learnt that his appeal to the High Court had failed — and I defy anyone to do so with dry eyes — will have seen a man of astonishing courage, broken by the immutability of the law. His final act of bravery was to start refusing food, rather than to put his loved ones at risk of prosecution. Pneumonia, fortunately, did the rest. But this was not the ending he deserved.